“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
--Misattributed to Albert Einstein (1875-1955)
(Attrib to AE with no source)
#writerslift #life #authors #love #art #coffee #diary #write #books #amwriting #quotes #AlbertEinstein #misattributions
No primary source in Einstein’s known writings, speeches, letters, or recorded interviews has been verified for this wording. Quote Investigator found the saying in circulation before the Einstein attribution took hold, with the Einstein linkage appearing in print by the mid-1990s.
The idea behind the quote is simple and durable: mistakes are not proof of failure, but evidence of effort. Anyone trying something unfamiliar is going to misstep, because experimentation and error are part of learning. The saying pushes back against perfectionism by suggesting that a spotless record may actually mean a person has avoided risk, challenge, and growth.
At a deeper level, the quote reframes error as a cost of progress rather than a sign of incompetence. New skills, discoveries, and creative work rarely come from caution alone. They come from testing, missing, adjusting, and trying again. That is why the line remains popular even without a solid Einstein source: it expresses a truth people recognize from experience, namely that doing nothing is often the only way to avoid mistakes, and that is usually the bigger mistake.
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
--Misattributed to Albert Einstein (1875-1955)
(Attrib to AE with no source)
#writerslift #life #authors #love #art #coffee #diary #write #books #amwriting #quotes #AlbertEinstein #misattributions